Recent comments by srinivasan gopalan

• Learning About Growth from Austerity

  Prof. Spence piece exquisitely brings out the fact of the universal truth that ills have to be got over only through pills-- no doubt countries administering the bitter pill of austerity remain in an unenviable predicament as to how to bring about growth without endangering the fisc front. If economics is touted to be behavioural science, it is time people suffering the ills of debt-driven and credit-card induced prosperity leraned to swallow the pills of austerity in order that they should emerge leaner and fitter to face the challenge and emerge triumphant in the end. Alternatively, use the lean phase of low growth to bolster the underlying values of life by being abstemious in living so that medium-to-long-term prospects get better and posterity should appreciate the sacrifice of the extant generation. There is no gain without pain nor there is growth without self-abnegation in the optimistic belief that better days would return and the global economy would revert to its pre-crisis growth level, once headwinds blow over. This is the long and short of the various economic jargons the erudite professor has employed to convince the heathen brethern who brook no austerity! G.Srinivasan, Journalist, New Delhi, India

• The Distortion of Grief

  Prof. Lane is right in not countenancing the demarcation of grief period as two weeks by the American Psychiatric Association(APA). To specify grief span particuarly when one has lost his/her dear and near is to infringe the invoilable fundamental right of one. After all, there are certain psychical scars one has to carry till one's tenure in the terra firma is cut and loss of one's beloved falls in this compelling category of woe. Grief always remains etched in mind depending on the depth of the feelings the deceased person has left with his/her closest ones. Nobody nowadays openly grieve as the diversions of the days are such that one gets stoical lest some one should find such mourning or grieving for the departed as not only incredible but also deem them to be wimp! It is also the trope of the time to put on a brave front even if one is mired in sorrow or seething with suppressed wailings. However well or ill one is placed in life, one's bereavement is best left to him or her instead of being constantly reminded that grief should be brief and that one should not let one's mind grow morose. As they say passage of time is the best balm to any tragedy although how hard one may try to get over by medicine or other mind-soothing regimen. It is also time that the practioners of psychiatry let people enjoy their personal space instead of constantly bamboozling them with their esoteric diagnosis or instilling fear psychosis! G.Srinivasan, Journalist, New Delhi, India

• Why India Slowed

  It is always a delight to dip into the pellucid thinking and incisive writing of the country's Ministry of Finance Chief Economic Advisor as his intellectual credentials are too immense to be ignored. Yet working within the system of government, it would be audacious on his part to claim that institutional incapacity continues to be a binding and besetting constraint on the further development of the country. If after six score of years of Independence, the country's politicians and bureaucrats had failed the people by their pathetic focus on short-term populism or garnering votes or aggrandising themselves with little compunction instead of pushing development, what else could be achieved now when the same set of politicans and bureacurats with whom Prof. Rajan has the misfortune to work now! Unless structural constraints and supply side bottlenecks are removed lock, stock and barrel coupled with a firm commitment to marshal more outlays for social and physcial infrastructure through purposive policy interventions, India's tryst with destiny woud at best be a work in progress in perpetuity with no tangible development in reality. One should remember in complete reverence to the perspicacity of the former Prime Minister of India Narashima Rao under whom the present prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh worked as his finance minister from 1991 to 1996 that the double-digit growth the Indian economy witnessed in the early part of the last decade became possible, despite with warts and all! It is another tragedy that the same Dr Singh at the helms could not deliver higher growth now because he was heading a viscesrally fractious coalition government with no personal authority to ensure that his writ runs and runs absolutely for the benefit of the people. Looking back with a minority government Narashima Rao brought about far-reaching economic liberalization measures that the subsequent governments including the one presently headed by Dr Singh could not even think of repeating such a feat. It is time political parties evolved a consensus in pushing for ensuring basic amenities to millions and a decent standard of living before attempting to putting the economy on a high growth trajectory. But the way politicians conduct themselves with the bureaucrats not being able to call the shots in the prevailing milieu of scams and scandals , the future is fraught unless good sense prevails for a better and decisivse governance and a salutary leadership that will not let the sink of ship of State! G.Srinivasan, Journalist, New Delhi, India

• Two Policy Prescriptions for the Global Crisis

  With due deference to the intellectual credentials of Dr Basu who was the Chief Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Finance in India before joining the World Bank, one must laud his impish modesty for having prefaced his prescriptions that experts know that they know less than non-experts think they do! As long as economists are not hubris tic enough to claim patent rights to their failed policies or proverbial failings, Dr Basu is welcome to proffer two or multiple prescriptions to the maladies plaguing the global economy today. To say that globalization has eroded boundaries and simultaneously seek coordination among at least major countries is ironical in that it penalizes the forced participants in globalization while investing a few countries with the power to call the shots or determine how others , particularly those out of the G-Major camp, should conduct themselves. The post-war global economy witnessed golden growth spell for more than three decades till Washington Consensus wreaked havoc across continents, bringing once puissant socialist USSR to its knees or much later the capitalist citadel US on a crumbling point by the financial meltdown of its own making! So any advocacy of fanciful ideologies either by the right or the left is no panacea for the ills bedeviling the world today. The only sane course is to let each nation fashion its own economic policy as was the case immediately after the post-war instead of prescribing one-size fits all strategy that is still being purveyed by the so-called professional economists who are bankrupt of fresh ideas or have their own personal axe to grind. No doubt, return to the sanest past is difficult as the world has advanced from the early 1970s but then all the strategies that the economists of repute prescribed or persist in prescribing in the name of saving the global economy are nothing short of chimerical proposals that have no solid base to unleash the growth impulses that lay dormant for far too long. Ideas like employment subsidies would only allow indolence and slovenliness to get embedded in the economy instead of contributing anything substantive for progress. G.Srinivasan, Journalist, New Delhi, Inde